Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Re: FW: My article on West Seti Project

October 6, 2010

Prof. Dr Mohan Lohani

Kathmandu

Dear Prof. Lohani

Thanks for emailing your comments.

I have come to understand that someone needs to take up a crusade to point out that the emperor is “naked” (the vision is defective, policies are harebrained and most people are corrupt) and I am wont to do it without mincing words. I do come up with strong critique due to which people have branded me as antidevelopment, which is absolutely wrong. In the limited space of about 800 to 1200 words, there is very little one could articulate and, hence, only critical expressions get aired.

In the captioned article I have tried to sketch how a project should be built in the interest of Nepal and Nepali people. This is an example of my vision for most of the projects related to water resource. I have written an article on vision for new Nepal driven by water resources, which can be accessed by following the link below:

I hope Indian people, politicos, bureaucracy et al and people in Nepal serving Indian interest are able to understand that this vision is not anti-Indian. This is a model that affords a win-win situation for both Nepal and India. They need to grow up and understand that projects that do not serve Nepali interest will not get built as the likes of us won’t allow such projects to be implemented (cancellation of current incarnation of West Seti project is a good example) and without having a project built in Nepal, India will never stand to get downstream benefits like flood control and water for irrigation during dry season without which she won’t be able to feed her ever increasing population. They need to remember that Ganga plain is her only granary and without arranging to have water in the rainy season stored in Nepal’s hills, it won’t be able to increase cropping intensity there. Necessary water, for example, to irrigate 1.5 million hectares of land can stored in one single project – upper Karnali – while we have only 1.6 million hectares of land in the whole Terai where water stored in the projects in mid hills could potentially be used.

Building a storage project entails cost for Nepal in terms of inundation of large tracks of land and displacement of local populace and they should not dream of building such a project without making necessary arrangement to recompense Nepal for this cost which could be in the lines of what Lesotho or Canada receives from South Africa and USA respectively. People in Nepal need to learn this and Indians need to be prepared to recompense Nepal for such costs.

Your West Seti Project article is commendable as it accords high priority to national interest.You are right if this multi-purpose project does not suit India's interest,we should make use of it by generating electricity and by irrigating our own land.But we should not shake our legs while negotiating with India terms and conditions for power deal .We always fail when we allow our own interest to supersede the larger interest .

Attached please find my article on the captioned topic. I am forwarding it to you in case you have yet to read it. If you have problem opening the attachment, you can also peruse it by following the link below: